Firefall (Tabula Rasa meets Borderlands meets Global Agenda)

[Ctuchik]

FIREFALL - Team-Based Action Shooter

I'm definitely keeping an eye on this one.

 

[Z^^]

sweet graphix I dont know seems like a pvegame?

 

[Ctuchik]

there's going to be pvp to from what i've read on their forum.

Firefall Forums - A Compilation of Questions Answered by the Devs Part 2

Will Firefall have pvp?

Yep. We have two main goals: raise the bar on co-op (hundreds of players in open dynamic world) and build great support for competitive clan based armies, ladders, stats and tournaments (PvP)

/edit: so there will be some form of pvp, how good it will be is anyones guess tho.

 

[Ctuchik]

anyone else getting slight dune vibes?

YouTube - Firefall PAX 2010 Debut Cinematic Trailer [HD]

 

[Raven]

From the gameplay video it certainly looks interesting. I was thinking. This would be sooo much better looking if it was an FPS, then they switched from 3rd person to FPS

Will be keeping an eye out for this.

 

[Ctuchik]

Maaaaasive bump but i really didn't feel like starting a new thread for this..

Making Progress | Firefall

 

[svartalf]

Beta impressions:

Ready, aim, Firefall: Impressions of the closed beta

by Matt Daniel

on Apr 8th 2012 2:00PM
Betas, Sci-fi, Previews, Free-to-play, Hands-on, MMOFPS



Last year at PAX Prime, I had the opportunity to get my hands on an early version of Red 5 Studios' upcoming MMOFPS, Firefall. The game's come a long way since then, having gone into closed beta shortly after PAX Prime.

As of Friday, the game's NDA has finally dropped, and I can finally tell you fine folks all about my experiences with the game's beta. For those of you somehow not in the know, Firefall is essentially two games in one. On the one hand, you have the title's open-world PvE content that sees players exploring the lands of New Eden in an attempt to find a way to fight back the destructive alien force known as the Melding. On the other, there's the competitive e-sports-esque PvP, which lets players test their skills against each another to see who's the best shot in New Eden. So how much has Firefall changed between PAX Prime '11 and PAX East '12?

Well, not much, but that's actually a good thing. If you read my impressions of the title at PAX Prime 2011, you'll remember that I thought it was fantastic. That opinion has not changed. If anything, the game has certainly gotten better in regard to polish, though the content is still about what you'd expect. Run around, shoot things, and get better gear to shoot more things. It may not sound like much, but believe me, it's a blast.

Let's start with the PvE. Right now, the PvE content in the Firefall beta is limited but still a load of fun. When you create a character, you're dropped into the lovely, paradisiacal locale of Copacabana, New Eden, in what was once Brazil. From there, you're tasked with traversing the picturesque beaches and fields of the area and murdering the ever-loving daylights out of anything that so much as looks at you funny, and damn is it a blast.

For starters, the game just looks wonderful. The animations are smooth, and I simply adore the art style. It's comicky and stylish without being overly cartoonish, and the battleframe designs are, in my opinion, stellar. Oh, and holy wow, Copacabana is gorgeous! Every time I log in, I feel like I'm on vacation, except that the vacation also happens to include obliterating the local wildlife.

But how's the gameplay itself? Well, like I said, PvE at the moment is limited. You have access to a few introductory missions, but after that, it trails off. The missions that are in the game are pretty standard stuff: Go here, shoot this, explore that, etc. There's nothing particularly revolutionary in that regard, but the missions accomplish what they need to, and that's giving you an excuse to get trigger-happy.

And of course, that's where the fun starts. There is a wide variety of battleframes to choose from, so whether you're a high-twitch player who prefers the sniper-rifle-wielding Recon or just someone who wants to perforate everything in sight with the Dreadnaught's minigun, there's something for you. Each class can be outfitted with a variety of weapons and abilities to customize its playstyle to your liking. Aggressively offensive Medic sound like fun to you? With the right modules and abilities, you can play just that. I went for the Recon battleframe outfitted with a high-speed sniper rifle, an ability that turned my bullets into explosives for a short time, and a long-range landmine that I could use to turn enemies into a fine crimson mist. And let me tell you something: If you've never pumped a charging giant arachnid thing full of resonating bolts and watched it explode into a zillion bitty pieces, you haven't lived, man.

"And let me tell you something: If you've never pumped a charging giant arachnid thing full of resonating bolts and watched it explode into a zillion bitty pieces, you haven't lived, man."

Another key feature of PvE is the concept of resource gathering. We're all familiar with the idea, but this is the future, so your high-tech supersoldier won't be running up to rocks with a mining pick to gather minerals. No, you'll use a handy gadget known as a thumper. This beastly mining device drops in from orbit to pound the ground beneath it in order to extract resources from the earth, but there's only one minor issue: It's hella loud, and that means it's hella attractive to surrounding wildlife that would like nothing more than to destroy your thumper and nom your face, so resource-gathering becomes a test of combat as players must defend their thumpers from attacking creatures long enough to finish gathering materials. Once successfully gathered, these materials can be used to craft a number of useful gadgets such as new weapons, battleframes, abilities, and more.

I'm sure the competitive among you are screaming, "Well what about the PvP?" So far I've dabbled in two different PvP gametypes: team deathmatch and sabotage. TDM is exactly what it says. I don't think I really need to go into detail on that one. Sabotage is an attack-defend gametype in which one team is on the offensive and the other on the defensive. The attackers have to hack into a series of three different control points in order to win the round, while the defenders, obviously, must keep them from doing so at all costs.

Now, let me make one thing perfectly clear: While I love me some competitive manshoots, I am by no means an expert or a pro, so my insight into balance and the sort is probably not the greatest. That being said, I never noticed any one class dominating the battlefield, and from what I've played, it seems like every battleframe brings something valuable to the team. Assault and Recon tend to be useful for cleaning out the enemy, while Dreadnaughts are useful for defending points due to their heavy armor. If you'd rather play more of a support role in PvP, just hop in as a Medic or an Engineer and heal your teammates, set up turrets, and generally just help the rest of your teammates do their jobs better.

Overall, I think the competitive players who want a balanced, e-sports-style PvP experience will find themselves rather pleased. Player skill and teamwork is rewarded, and higher-level weapons/armor don't necessarily provide more power, just more playstyle options. For example, my initial sniper rifle was a powerful bolt-action piece with a small clip and a long delay between shots. My newer one is considerably less powerful, but it has an extended clip and a higher rate of fire, which allows me to compensate for missed shots much more easily. My one complaint is this: While the weapons and such are generally sidegrades, players who haven't reached a high-enough level to unlock their abilities are at a distinct disadvantage because obviously three different abilities make your character much more powerful (and versatile) than just one, and considering the rate at which I was gaining new abilities (read: somewhat slowly), I wish the game would provide players with their choice of abilities in competitive PvP for the sake of balance.

Ultimately, I'm quite a fan of Firefall. Not only is it tackling a genre that's sorely underrepresented in the industry, but it's doing so with panache. PvE-focused players who want to explore a rich, vibrant world and play cooperatively with friends will find plenty to like, but the pugilists who want to be the very best (like no one ever was) will definitely be thrilled with the game's competitive PvP. Both facets of the game seem to be shaping up nicely, so we can only hope that this progression continues well into launch... whenever that is.

Massively's not big on scored reviews -- what use are those to ever-changing MMOs? That's why we bring you first impressions, previews, hands-on experiences, and even follow-up impressions for nearly every game we stumble across. First impressions count for a lot, but games evolve, so why shouldn't our opinions?
Tags: beta, cbt, closed-beta, closed-beta-test, con, convention, expo, f2p, featured, firefall, first-person-shooter, fps, free-to-play, hands-on, impressions, mmo-shooter, mmofps, pax, pax-2012, pax-east, pax-east-2012, penny-arcade-expo, preview, previews, pvp, red-5, red-5-studios, sci-fi, shooter, war

 

[svartalf]

Opening cinematic.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/0...s-of-new-eden-and-the-melding-in-firefalls-o/
http://www.youtube.com/embed/W3oai5Vx6Ns

 

[BloodOmen]

When is it due to go live? looked alright I thought but then again I wasnt a fan of Global Agenda or Tabula Rasa so it might not be for me.

 

[Ctuchik]

It has theoretically already launched.

Another thing Mark pointed out in the article on The Escapist is that Firefall is a free online service that has already “launched” and has active users. As such, we don’t have an official launch date as you would see with other games or products. In December of this year, we plan to open up the Firefall virtual item store and begin taking micro-transaction payments that will fund the game. This is also the point in time when we would perform our final character wipe to reset all players for the last time.
Our beta invitation system and user acquisition will continue to expand through December in order to ensure a stable, consistent, and fun environment for Firefall.

So if you get into the "beta" the game has launched for you because you will not lose the character you make when they open the floodgates...

http://firefallthegame.com/blog/2011/08/04/firefall-beta-process

/edit: worth a read.http://firefallthegame.com/blog/2012/03/29/an-open-letter-to-our-testers

 

[Ctuchik]

Sweet, got a beta invite today..

 

[svartalf]

Can we get the title of this thread changed to the name of the game?

 

[BloodOmen]

it any good then? been watching a few streams on twitch.tv of it but it didnt look all that impressive tbh.

 

[Mabs]

its quite wierd, certainly an acquired taste, but quite a lot of promise
its very BETAy... hopefully its going to be improved a lot

some beta people get a "2 friends aswell " keys email so ask around

 

[Ctuchik]

Can we get the title of this thread changed to the name of the game?

Reported my first post asking for it.

 

[Ctuchik]

it any good then? been watching a few streams on twitch.tv of it but it didnt look all that impressive tbh.

It is a strange game yeah. Been playing a few hours yesterday and some today and i found 1 quest (that as far as i could tell did not give any XP) that basically is a daily "go help the town and mine minerals that you can keep for no reason what so ever"...

And the game itself is very VERY mining heavy. As in, got a weapon unlocked? Go farm mats and build it yourself, same with skills and armor and everything else.

The pvp is very WoW/SWTOR:ish, as in it's team deathmatch and capture and hold. No CTF though funnily enough.... There are supposed to be open pvp areas but i have no idea where they are or if they are even enabled. But at the same time it has a bit of a Tribes/Tribes 2 vibe to it as you have jet packs.

Though the one biggest plus i could find is that you do not need alts (apart from having a female and a male toon i suppose). One character can change between all battle frames. You do need to level them up separately though.

And then there is the biggest downer right now. There are almost NO documentation about how to play, what you need for what items in terms of materials and all that stuff so it's very much "what does this do, oh nothing because i need this and that and that to"...

Overall though it's quite an interesting game, but imo they need something more then "thumper groups (mining ops basically)", open pvp and battlegrounds to make it lift off....

 

[old.Tohtori]

Sounds a lot like RFOnline from that review Ctuchik. That game was grindminetastic.

Though it had robots, so that was nice.

 

[svartalf]

Reported my first post asking for it.

Thanks to all those responsible for this.

 

[Ctuchik]

Sounds a lot like RFOnline from that review Ctuchik. That game was grindminetastic.

Though it had robots, so that was nice.

Well, it's a phase 1 beta so i won't make any judgement's quite yet. But it does seem to be pretty much battling EvE-O for the position of stupidly grindy mining award...

This will eventually have robots to as far as i know. And other vehicles you can blow shit up with..

Though this game have gotten my personal award for having the biggest "wtf" bug... Screen Resolutions can't be altered in game. You have to edit a config file for that... xD

It does save between sessions though unless you mess around with windowed mode....

 

[Ctuchik]

Been playing the engineer in pvp quite a bit last night and oh my GOD does it have issues outside static defenses. You're mostly screwed unless you have something to defend and can set up your deployables, and even then a semi decent assault will most likely manage to kill you anyway....

At least the Robotic in Global Agenda has short duration mobile pets they could throw out to make the class not so bloody situational. The engineer here has a turret, a heal/rearm station and a forcefield that is so weak one assault/dreadnought can kill it even if the engineer repair it... They do get a pulse generator to but it's utter trash that deals no damage (drains energy that gets replenished in about 2 seconds) and the KB is pathetic.

Great support class but you really really need to know what you're doing if you plan to roam around solo:ish...

 

[Ctuchik]

Slight bump. Have 2 invites if anyone feels like giving it a bash. Don't have to worry about any character wipes because there won't be any, so the game has basically released even if it's not official..

 

[Aada]

Just bought the cheap founder pack today after playing the beta, seemed worth the £12.50 from $-£.

 

[Raven]

Did this die or is it working?

Any future to it?

 

[Aada]

Seems to be doing well, a very smooth twitch shooter and have been enjoying the PVE so far grouping up with people and trying to take outposts back.

It's fucking hard though very much a game where soloing will not get you very far it seems very much a party game where you need to group to achieve things such as taking outposts back from the Chosen.

I did some crafting and it seems quite a nice system they have, will play more tomorrow.

 

[Ctuchik]

Bump

Got 5 invites to hand out if you're interested.

 

[Hawkwind]

Just seen this on Steam, is it any good? Seems entire guild is on hols in TESO so was looking for something to play around with.

 

[miri]

Woeful from what I played of it (only a few hours).

 

[Hawkwind]

Thanks Miri, always a bit skeptical of these FTP paytowin type MMO's. With the exceptions of Neverwinter and Tera I have never enjoyed playing them.

 

[miri]

Honestly I just don't think an MMO FPS can work, they're all terrible. The original Planetside was the closest I've seen to playable/fun, but it was still pretty weak imo.

 

[Mabs]

it was poo when i tried it ages ago
then they mentioned "E SPORTS" and i went yea...no